Public Service Announcement

This weekend I attempted the impossible; to disappear from life and get a grip. The last few weeks have been slightly intense and I needed a break. It didn't work, and the reason is because I can't completely turn off.



For those of you who haven't heard yet, my father is very sick. He has liver failure which causes all kinds of problems and he sometimes ends up in the hospital due to high ammonia levels in his brain which cause him to be 'out of it' to the point where he gets very confused and will call his new wife by his mother's name. Not a good thing.



I haven't blogged about this yet. Mostly because it's very personal, but also because isn't just my life, it is affecting everyone's lives around him, and most importantly it is really my dad's life I'm talking about. I feel weird about putting this all out there because of how others may 'read into' what I'm saying or that they might use some of this against me later on, but I feel like this is my way of getting things out there, and this will serve as my public service message.



I watch a lot of garbage tv when I need to decompress. Usually there is a hot guy on the show that just makes me happy to think there is someone out there like that (regardless of whether he is real or not). Numbers is a show I like to watch for two reasons: there is Don, the troubled soul FBI agent who is hot, and his nerdy mathemetician brother Charlie who is just geeky enough to be cute and quirky and you learn things from him. The episode I was watching, ironically, was about organ transplants and the black market sale of organs to donors. The episode focused on kidney transplants, but it basically served a purpose: to get the word out about organ donation.



My dad just got confirmed to be on the waiting list for a new liver, which is GREAT news. The other side to this great news is the waiting. The weird sensation of praying (or thinking/ wishing really hard) for a new liver to come up which will match all the categories of my dad. This basically means I'm hoping someone dies. This is a strange feeling. Knowing I am waiting for someone to die so my dad can live, and knowing that everyone that does die is not an organ donor or a match.



One of the recent times I was up at my dad's house, my grandmother announced to me "12 people died this week in Seattle. " My initial reaction was "holy lord, she's counting people's deaths!" and then I realized, every one of those people that died was a possibility for a new liver, and each person that didn't have the same characteristics reduced that possibility, along with the reduction by people who aren't organ donors.

So, here is my public service announcement. Be an organ donor. Help a family. Save a life.